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The EPA already allows asbestos to be used in a huge range of products. I simply cannot see what justification could be made for allowing asbestos to continue t

The EPA already allows asbestos to be used in a huge range of products. I simply cannot see what justification could be made for allowing asbestos to continue to be used in cement sheet, floor tile and brake pads. It might pose no immediate hazard when installed, but it could become a serious hazard at any point during its lifespan. Cement sheets crack and crumble, floor tiles become worn and get replaced, brake pads are designed to wear down. When you install any asbestos-containing material, you're setting a deadly man-trap. https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos In the EU, there's a blanket ban on manufacturing or selling asbestos-containing products under the REACH regulations, with an exception only for replacement membranes in existing electrolysis equipment. Member states can add specific exemptions where there is a valid justification; in the UK, those exemptions apply only to used acetylene gas cylinders, heritage vehicles and museum artefacts. https://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/574c30dd-398d-b3ff-cc67-e7e843c2b243 https://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/574c30dd-398d-b3ff-cc... http://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/exemption.htm http://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/exemption.htm

xienze 8y ago
The danger of asbestos to regular people is way overstated. Yes, if you work around it every day for years without wearing a mask you'll regret it. If it's in your floor tiles and one breaks, you'll be fine.
- rescripting 8y ago
  "all levels of asbestos exposure studied to date have demonstrated asbestos-related disease ... there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical effects do not occur" https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-103/pdfs/81-103.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-103/pdfs/81-103.pdf
  - xienze 8y ago
    > However, in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos > Asbestos can be found naturally in the air outdoors and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Even nonoccupationally exposed members of the human population have tens to hundreds of thousands of asbestos fibers per gram of dry lung tissue, equivalent to millions of fibers in each lung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Environmental_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Envi... OMG we're all gonna get mesothelioma from the asbestos that is normally found outdoors, unrelated to man-made activity! Again, I stand by what I said. The risks of asbestos to ordinary people are way overblown. It has to be loose and you have to be exposed to a lot of it for a long period of time. Regular people are fine. Edit: ya know people, you could respond to the specific claims instead of pressing the "I disagree" button. Is asbestos a dangerous substance? Yes, in certain circumstances. Are those circumstances something normal people need to be concerned about? No, not unless you work with the substance every day and without proper precautions.
    - docker_up 8y ago
      People are downvoting because they believe what they've been told for decades from the media and late night lawyers commercials but this is the scientific fact. Non-friable asbestos is not dangerous, and people who don't work with it on a constant basis are not at risk. Those people who work with asbestos over longer periods of time are the ones who are at risk. A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer. This is the same belief/religion with high salt or high fat diets. People have grown up for so long with those beliefs because we have been indoctrinated that when new science comes up that disproves the above, they disbelieve the science.
      - pastor_elm 8y ago
        >A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer Simply not a claim you can make. The incidence may be very low, but it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. Any number of fibers in your lungs 'may' cause cancer, even one.
        docker_up 8y ago
        > it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. This is also a claim you simply cannot make. Every chemical has a toxicity level. A single x-ray could give you lung cancer if you're unlucky. Just because there's a claim floating around that a single fiber could cause cancer is meaningless. Was this in a test tube or a lab environment? Every day, millions of your own body cells are developing cancer because the DNA is being misreplicated during mitosis. But you have structures in your body that fight against this cancer and destroy those cells. You're saying, without any evidence, that your body can't fight a few microscopic fibers? Remember, any number of x-rays, including dental x-rays, could also cause cancer but you don't see people banning x-rays.
        shadofx 8y ago
        Radiation has known degrees of safety. https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10098 https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_tab... >There is no "safe" level of asbestos exposure for any type of asbestos fiber. https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/
  - TimTheTinker 8y ago
    That is a 1980 pamphlet, not a scientific paper. OP is right -- there is a lower limit of acceptable asbestos exposure that is not well known. All the asbestos-related mesothelioma cases were from workplace exposure for an extended period (more than two months). Furthermore, there are two major forms of asbestos that have widely varying effects. Chrysotile has been shown to not be harmful in small doses. (That's the stuff that you'll find in popcorn ceilings installed prior to 1974.) "Inhalation toxicity studies of chrysotile at non-lung overload conditions demonstrate that the long (>20 µm) fibers are rapidly cleared from the lung, are not translocated to the pleural cavity and do not initiate fibrogenic response." Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/
- methehack 8y ago
  If you're going to express an opinion, particularly one contrary to widely held beliefs/truths, you need to provide evidence/reasons. That's called "discourse."
  - xienze 8y ago
    See my other reply.
    - methehack 8y ago
      I looked at your other replies. You consistently reassert your initial claim without evidence. When presented with evidence, you re-assert your claims, again without evidence. You even go so far as blaming others as being intolerant when they challenge you with evidence. All of this makes you seem like a bad actor to me -- someone either utterly obtuse or willfully trying to undermine everyone else's very ability to have a meaningful conversation.
- blensor 8y ago
  So how does the asbestos get into your floor or ceiling? People have to work with it and those people are not hazmat wearing highly paid specialists but your normal workers who get the burden of making sure that they take all precautions during their whole working career no matter the environmental conditions. And the only support they get from their employer are probably just the mask and a note to always use it. Disclaimer: I have an asbestos linked death in my immediate family so my opinion may be biased.
  - xienze 8y ago
    That's unfortunate but again, I was talking about the danger of asbestos to people who don't work with it for a living.
    - conradev 8y ago
      I think the OP’s point is that if it’s used anywhere, then it’s someone’s job to work with it.
  - ateesdalejr 8y ago
    You know those drop ceilings in offices? Some older tiles used in those ceilings contain asbestos.
- cmurf 8y ago
  Doesn't matter whether it's overstated, there are laws on the books that businesses and lawyers have successfully lobbied for that require inspections when there is even the possibility of exposure - and all of that costs money. For example, high rise condo with asbestos used as insulation. Electrician comes in, doesn't know this, does some scraping, people find out, and now the state mandates detector traps be set. Those found asbestos exposure, and that triggered a full abatement and removal for that entire condo unit. Then the neighbors sued claiming exposure. And since that abatement, the upstairs neighbors have flooded the abated unit five times, and every single time the law requires asbestos testing even in the exact same ceiling tested 2 months earlier, just because it was a different flood event. Testing and retesting even though that ceiling has long since been abated. One teeny tiny example, thousands of dollars, multiplied by millions of people and incidents. And that's when no one gets sick.
hanniabu 8y ago
Welcome to the US lobbying system, where science, ethics, and morals take a backseat to agendas of those with the deepest pockets.
- bruinjoe 8y ago
  This is so true. We should just ban lobbying because it is only used by rich corporations and individuals.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Lobbying is just a legal form of corruption. Ban it, and it will still continue to exist underground anyway. What we need is to stop voting for idiot politicians.
    - trhway 8y ago
      For that you need to stop produce idiot voters.
      - peterwwillis 8y ago
        Exactly. Garbage in, garbage out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWrsEpWgrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWrsEpWgrc
      - hanniabu 8y ago
        Well to be fair, it's difficult to be an educated voter since the candidates are allowed to say whatever they want in the election period and aren't beholden to follow through with the terms they were elected for.
        dwd 8y ago
        This... Electioneering should be treated the same as advertising and have the same penalties for making false or misleading statements.
    - 8y ago
lb1lf 8y ago
...a former employer (based in the EU, exports perhaps 2/3 of production outside the EU) took a major financial hit when it was found that a valve sourced from a cheaper supplier than the ones originally used contained an (undeclared) asbestos gasket. Cost of replacement gasket? Less than $1/system. Cost of getting to gasket? ~$70-80k/system. We had deployed a few hundred. On the upside, after this incident, noone in purchasing tried to source cheaper, same-same but different replacements for parts specified by engineering for years thereafter...
- blattimwind 8y ago
  "same same" is the enemy of quality in any supply chain.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    And the friend of your customer's wallet. Trade-offs are everywhere.
    - lb1lf 8y ago
      Depends on the time span; a once mentor of mine always quipped that the ultimate act of laziness was to do things properly the first time and be done with it; much the same goes for the economics of cost savings - long term, quality tends to lead to longer maintenance intervals and simpler maintenance at that. The ultimate cheapness is to buy quality items and be done with it. (Obviously, there will be cases where this doesn't hold true, but as a first-order approximation...)
      - Drdrdrq 8y ago
        "I am not rich enough to buy cheap stuff."
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
makomk 8y ago
Under the proposed Significant New Use Rule, almost all of those previously-legal products - basically anything that's no longer on the market in the US with asbestos in - will be considered significant new uses and subject to EPA pre-approval. You can read the actual proposed rule here: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-06/documents/epa-hq-oppt-2018-0159-0001.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-06/documents... As far as I can tell, both this article and the Snopes fact check are simply wrong. The SNUR pretty clearly does not in any way change the existing blanket ban on new uses of asbestos, defined as using asbestos in any kind of product which it wasn't used in in the US prior to 1989. It only imposes further restrictions on the asbestos products which weren't banned in the US. (See in particular section III of the notice, which explains the rationale and how it relates to the existing ban.)

xienze 8y ago

The danger of asbestos to regular people is way overstated. Yes, if you work around it every day for years without wearing a mask you'll regret it. If it's in your floor tiles and one breaks, you'll be fine.

rescripting 8y ago
"all levels of asbestos exposure studied to date have demonstrated asbestos-related disease ... there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical effects do not occur" https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-103/pdfs/81-103.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-103/pdfs/81-103.pdf
- xienze 8y ago
  > However, in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos > Asbestos can be found naturally in the air outdoors and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Even nonoccupationally exposed members of the human population have tens to hundreds of thousands of asbestos fibers per gram of dry lung tissue, equivalent to millions of fibers in each lung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Environmental_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Envi... OMG we're all gonna get mesothelioma from the asbestos that is normally found outdoors, unrelated to man-made activity! Again, I stand by what I said. The risks of asbestos to ordinary people are way overblown. It has to be loose and you have to be exposed to a lot of it for a long period of time. Regular people are fine. Edit: ya know people, you could respond to the specific claims instead of pressing the "I disagree" button. Is asbestos a dangerous substance? Yes, in certain circumstances. Are those circumstances something normal people need to be concerned about? No, not unless you work with the substance every day and without proper precautions.
  - docker_up 8y ago
    People are downvoting because they believe what they've been told for decades from the media and late night lawyers commercials but this is the scientific fact. Non-friable asbestos is not dangerous, and people who don't work with it on a constant basis are not at risk. Those people who work with asbestos over longer periods of time are the ones who are at risk. A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer. This is the same belief/religion with high salt or high fat diets. People have grown up for so long with those beliefs because we have been indoctrinated that when new science comes up that disproves the above, they disbelieve the science.
    - pastor_elm 8y ago
      >A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer Simply not a claim you can make. The incidence may be very low, but it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. Any number of fibers in your lungs 'may' cause cancer, even one.
      - docker_up 8y ago
        > it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. This is also a claim you simply cannot make. Every chemical has a toxicity level. A single x-ray could give you lung cancer if you're unlucky. Just because there's a claim floating around that a single fiber could cause cancer is meaningless. Was this in a test tube or a lab environment? Every day, millions of your own body cells are developing cancer because the DNA is being misreplicated during mitosis. But you have structures in your body that fight against this cancer and destroy those cells. You're saying, without any evidence, that your body can't fight a few microscopic fibers? Remember, any number of x-rays, including dental x-rays, could also cause cancer but you don't see people banning x-rays.
        shadofx 8y ago
        Radiation has known degrees of safety. https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10098 https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_tab... >There is no "safe" level of asbestos exposure for any type of asbestos fiber. https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/
- TimTheTinker 8y ago
  That is a 1980 pamphlet, not a scientific paper. OP is right -- there is a lower limit of acceptable asbestos exposure that is not well known. All the asbestos-related mesothelioma cases were from workplace exposure for an extended period (more than two months). Furthermore, there are two major forms of asbestos that have widely varying effects. Chrysotile has been shown to not be harmful in small doses. (That's the stuff that you'll find in popcorn ceilings installed prior to 1974.) "Inhalation toxicity studies of chrysotile at non-lung overload conditions demonstrate that the long (>20 µm) fibers are rapidly cleared from the lung, are not translocated to the pleural cavity and do not initiate fibrogenic response." Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/
methehack 8y ago
If you're going to express an opinion, particularly one contrary to widely held beliefs/truths, you need to provide evidence/reasons. That's called "discourse."
- xienze 8y ago
  See my other reply.
  - methehack 8y ago
    I looked at your other replies. You consistently reassert your initial claim without evidence. When presented with evidence, you re-assert your claims, again without evidence. You even go so far as blaming others as being intolerant when they challenge you with evidence. All of this makes you seem like a bad actor to me -- someone either utterly obtuse or willfully trying to undermine everyone else's very ability to have a meaningful conversation.
blensor 8y ago
So how does the asbestos get into your floor or ceiling? People have to work with it and those people are not hazmat wearing highly paid specialists but your normal workers who get the burden of making sure that they take all precautions during their whole working career no matter the environmental conditions. And the only support they get from their employer are probably just the mask and a note to always use it. Disclaimer: I have an asbestos linked death in my immediate family so my opinion may be biased.
- xienze 8y ago
  That's unfortunate but again, I was talking about the danger of asbestos to people who don't work with it for a living.
  - conradev 8y ago
    I think the OP’s point is that if it’s used anywhere, then it’s someone’s job to work with it.
- ateesdalejr 8y ago
  You know those drop ceilings in offices? Some older tiles used in those ceilings contain asbestos.
cmurf 8y ago
Doesn't matter whether it's overstated, there are laws on the books that businesses and lawyers have successfully lobbied for that require inspections when there is even the possibility of exposure - and all of that costs money. For example, high rise condo with asbestos used as insulation. Electrician comes in, doesn't know this, does some scraping, people find out, and now the state mandates detector traps be set. Those found asbestos exposure, and that triggered a full abatement and removal for that entire condo unit. Then the neighbors sued claiming exposure. And since that abatement, the upstairs neighbors have flooded the abated unit five times, and every single time the law requires asbestos testing even in the exact same ceiling tested 2 months earlier, just because it was a different flood event. Testing and retesting even though that ceiling has long since been abated. One teeny tiny example, thousands of dollars, multiplied by millions of people and incidents. And that's when no one gets sick.

hanniabu 8y ago

Welcome to the US lobbying system, where science, ethics, and morals take a backseat to agendas of those with the deepest pockets.

bruinjoe 8y ago
This is so true. We should just ban lobbying because it is only used by rich corporations and individuals.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Lobbying is just a legal form of corruption. Ban it, and it will still continue to exist underground anyway. What we need is to stop voting for idiot politicians.
  - trhway 8y ago
    For that you need to stop produce idiot voters.
    - peterwwillis 8y ago
      Exactly. Garbage in, garbage out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWrsEpWgrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWrsEpWgrc
    - hanniabu 8y ago
      Well to be fair, it's difficult to be an educated voter since the candidates are allowed to say whatever they want in the election period and aren't beholden to follow through with the terms they were elected for.
      - dwd 8y ago
        This... Electioneering should be treated the same as advertising and have the same penalties for making false or misleading statements.
  - 8y ago

lb1lf 8y ago

...a former employer (based in the EU, exports perhaps 2/3 of production outside the EU) took a major financial hit when it was found that a valve sourced from a cheaper supplier than the ones originally used contained an (undeclared) asbestos gasket. Cost of replacement gasket? Less than $1/system. Cost of getting to gasket? ~$70-80k/system. We had deployed a few hundred. On the upside, after this incident, noone in purchasing tried to source cheaper, same-same but different replacements for parts specified by engineering for years thereafter...

blattimwind 8y ago
"same same" is the enemy of quality in any supply chain.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  And the friend of your customer's wallet. Trade-offs are everywhere.
  - lb1lf 8y ago
    Depends on the time span; a once mentor of mine always quipped that the ultimate act of laziness was to do things properly the first time and be done with it; much the same goes for the economics of cost savings - long term, quality tends to lead to longer maintenance intervals and simpler maintenance at that. The ultimate cheapness is to buy quality items and be done with it. (Obviously, there will be cases where this doesn't hold true, but as a first-order approximation...)
    - Drdrdrq 8y ago
      "I am not rich enough to buy cheap stuff."
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

makomk 8y ago

Under the proposed Significant New Use Rule, almost all of those previously-legal products - basically anything that's no longer on the market in the US with asbestos in - will be considered significant new uses and subject to EPA pre-approval. You can read the actual proposed rule here: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-06/documents/epa-hq-oppt-2018-0159-0001.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-06/documents... As far as I can tell, both this article and the Snopes fact check are simply wrong. The SNUR pretty clearly does not in any way change the existing blanket ban on new uses of asbestos, defined as using asbestos in any kind of product which it wasn't used in in the US prior to 1989. It only imposes further restrictions on the asbestos products which weren't banned in the US. (See in particular section III of the notice, which explains the rationale and how it relates to the existing ban.)